An off-duty Crestwood police officer choked a woman to the point of apparent unconsciousness inside their trailer at a Portage, Indiana, campground last weekend as three children pleaded for him to stop, police said.
Dino Pavoni, 38, of Midlothian, was charged with felony strangulation, four counts of felony domestic battery and interference with reporting of a crime following the altercation early Sunday morning at Lakeshore Camp Resort, according to court records.
He allegedly became upset after she woke him in the middle of the night to ask for help closing the awning on their camper, according to police reports.
The violent argument that ensued was captured by an outdoor camera and on cellphone videos recorded by one of the children.
Neither Pavoni nor Crestwood officials immediately responded to requests for comment on the incident.
When Portage police arrived about 3 a.m., after one of the children called 911, all three were in tears, and two told officers they worried she might be dead.
Officers found the woman on the floor of the camper, conscious, but dizzy, with redness around her neck, and in need of medical attention, according to police reports.
She told them Pavoni had grown angry after she woke him and began yelling outside the trailer, reports state.
During the course of the argument, Pavoni allegedly twice slammed the camper’s door on a child’s arm, threw a cellphone into a roadway and flipped over a picnic table, according to the reports.
The argument escalated inside the trailer where cellphone video showed him standing over the woman as she sat on a bed, yelling at her with an object in his left hand that appeared to be a holstered handgun, the reports state.
Police said the woman in the video said, “Get out of my face” and “Get out” as Pavoni stood in front of her.
As she stood up and placed her hand out to keep him at bay, Pavoni is seen striking her head with his right hand, according to the recording detailed in the report.
At one point as he walked past the children, who were still filming, one of them can be heard yelling, “please stop, please stop,” the report states.
One of the recordings shows Pavoni holding the woman up against a hallway wall by her neck and slamming her to the ground, according to the reports.
He’s then seen stepping over her body and into the living room area as she lies on the ground, gasping for air, the reports state.
“I don’t want her to die,” one of the children is heard yelling, according to the reports, which describe the child pleading with Pavoni and telling him that she’s unconscious.
Pavoni is seen on video leaning over the woman, and telling the child she is still breathing, according to the reports. He eventually attempted to move the woman into an upright position, the reports state.
Pavoni told officers at the scene she was the aggressor and twice denied striking her, according to police reports.
He said he was trying to restrain the woman by holding her against the wall when she had a seizure and fell face down on the floor, according to the reports.
Pavoni said he checked to ensure she was breathing and had a pulse, and then left her on the floor and went into the bedroom, the reports state. He told officers he had not called 911 because he knew she was breathing and had a pulse, according to the reports.
zkoeske@tribpub.com
Twitter @ZakKoeske
